Paying Subcontractors: Payment Runs, Remittance Advice and the Construction Act
How a compliant subcontractor payment run works in UK construction — payment and pay-less notices, the final date for payment, CIS deductions, remittance advice, and why the notice you did not send is the one that costs you.
Short answer: A compliant payment run is a sequence of dates, not a bank transfer. The due date and final date for payment come from the contract; a payment notice must follow the due date; a pay-less notice must precede the final date if you intend to pay less; CIS deductions must be calculated and evidenced; and the subcontractor needs a remittance and a deduction statement. Miss a notice deadline and you owe the full applied-for sum.
The statutory frame
Construction payment in the UK is governed by the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, as amended by the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. It applies to most construction contracts whether or not anyone read it, and where a contract falls short, the Scheme for Construction Contracts fills the gap.
Three features matter more than the rest:
A right to periodic payment. Contracts over 45 days must provide for interim payments with an adequate mechanism for determining what is due and when.
A notice regime. Payment is driven by notices with deadlines. The deadlines are jurisdictional in effect: an adjudicator will enforce the consequence of a missed notice without much interest in whether the underlying valuation was fair.
A right to suspend and to adjudicate. A payee who is not paid the notified sum by the final date can suspend performance on notice, and either party can refer a dispute to adjudication at any time.
The sequence of dates
Every payment cycle runs through the same five points. Their intervals are set by the contract; their order never changes.
| Point | What happens |
| Payment due date | Fixed by the contract, usually tied to a monthly cycle or an application |
| Payment notice | The payer (or a specified person) states the sum considered due and the basis of calculation, within the period after the due date |
| Default payment notice | Where the payer issues nothing, the payee's application may stand as the notice |
| Pay-less notice | If the payer intends to pay less than the notified sum, issued no later than the prescribed period before the final date |
| Final date for payment | The date the notified sum must actually be paid |
This is why "smash-and-grab" adjudications succeed. The subcontractor is not arguing the work was worth the money. They are arguing that the notice deadlines passed, and the arithmetic of the Act did the rest.
What a valid notice contains
Both notice types need to state the sum and the basis on which it is calculated. That second requirement is where notices fail on challenge.
A payment notice saying "we consider £38,400 due" with no breakdown is vulnerable. A notice setting out the gross valuation, less previously certified, less retention, less contra-charges itemised, arriving at £38,400, is not. The same applies to a pay-less notice — "we intend to pay £12,000 less" is far weaker than a notice identifying £7,000 of defective work by location, £3,500 of back-charged attendance and £1,500 of unagreed daywork.
Two practical rules:
- Issue the notice even when you agree with the application. A notice confirming the applied-for sum costs nothing and removes the default-notice route entirely.
- Never rely on an email being "obviously" a notice. Where the contract prescribes a form, a method of service or a named recipient, use it. Notices have been held invalid for being sent to the wrong person.
CIS, inside the run
Where the Construction Industry Scheme applies, deductions happen inside the payment run, not alongside it.
For each subcontractor payment:
The materials point is the recurring error. Overstated materials on a subcontractor's invoice reduce the deduction, and the contractor carries the risk of getting it wrong. Where the split looks implausible, ask for evidence before paying, not after filing.
VAT interacts here too: for most business-to-business construction supplies the domestic reverse charge shifts the VAT accounting to the customer, so the subcontractor's invoice carries no VAT for you to pay. Getting reverse charge and CIS right on the same invoice is a two-step check, and both are done at the point of payment.
Remittance advice: small document, large effect
A remittance advice tells the subcontractor what has been paid, on what date, against which invoices and applications, with what deducted and why.
It sounds administrative. In practice it removes most payment queries before they are made. A subcontractor who receives an unexplained bank credit will ring your accounts team; one who receives a remittance identifying four invoices, retention held and CIS deducted will not.
It also protects you. A remittance is contemporaneous evidence of what a payment was for. Where a payment is later argued to have been on account of something else, the remittance settles it.
Include, as a minimum: your details and theirs, the payment date and amount, the invoices or applications settled with their references, retention held this period and cumulatively, CIS deducted, and any contra-charges with a reference to the notice that raised them.
Running the payment run itself
The mechanics of a run, once the amounts are settled:
Step 4 is where manual processes fail expensively. A payment run typed into online banking from a spreadsheet has no check between the approved total and the paid total, and a transposed sort code is discovered by the subcontractor who did not get paid.
ScopeKit produces a bank file from an approved payment run, with a remittance advice for each subcontractor generated from the same data, so the amount approved, the amount paid and the amount advised cannot diverge. Inbound bills are read automatically into the Bills inbox for checking, and hire bills are matched line by line against the hired item, flagging any line charging for days after that item went back.
The failures worth designing against
Notice deadlines tracked in someone's head. They are contractual dates that vary by contract. They belong in a calendar with alerts, per subcontract.
Paying on invoice date rather than the contractual final date. Paying early is a cash flow choice; paying late is a suspension right and interest.
Contra-charges applied without a pay-less notice. The deduction may be entirely justified and still unrecoverable because the notice was late.
Retention released without a record. Half of all retention disputes are about whether the first moiety was ever released.
A payment run in a spreadsheet. No audit of who approved what, no link to the invoices, and no evidence six months later of why a subcontractor was paid what they were paid.
Related reading
- CIS deductions explained — verification, rates and the materials split in detail.
- VAT domestic reverse charge — the other check on the same invoice.
- Retention in construction — what you are holding and when it must go back.
- Dayworks explained — the items most likely to be contra-charged.
- CIS in ScopeKit — verification, deductions and monthly returns.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a pay-less notice and when must it be issued?
- A pay-less notice states that you intend to pay less than the notified sum, the amount you now consider due and the basis for it. It must be issued no later than the prescribed period before the final date for payment, set by the contract. Miss that deadline and the notified sum becomes payable in full, regardless of the merits of your deduction.
- What happens if you fail to issue a payment notice at all?
- Where the payer issues no payment notice, the payee's application for payment can become the notified sum by default — the position often described as a smash-and-grab. The payer then owes the applied-for amount unless a valid pay-less notice is issued in time. Adjudicators enforce this on the dates alone, which is why a diary of notice deadlines is worth more than a strong argument about valuation.
- Is a CIS payment and deduction statement the same as a remittance advice?
- No. A remittance advice is a commercial document telling the subcontractor what you are paying and against which invoices. A CIS payment and deduction statement is a statutory document a contractor must give to each subcontractor they have deducted from, showing the gross payment, the materials element and the amount deducted. Many contractors issue one document covering both, which is fine provided it carries everything CIS requires.
- Are pay-when-paid clauses enforceable in UK construction contracts?
- Conditioning your payment to a subcontractor on receiving payment from someone else is generally ineffective under the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, apart from a narrow exception concerning the insolvency of a third party further up the chain. A pay-when-paid clause in a subcontract is therefore usually unenforceable, even where both parties signed it.
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